How many, how often, and how new? A multivariate profiling of mobile app users

Despite enormous demand for and explosive growth of mobile phone apps in recent years, few studies have been conducted to arrive at a multi-faceted valuation of app users. Our paper addresses this important gap in literature. Drawing on Household Production Theory and Hedonic and Utilitarian Consumption Theory, we investigate how mobile app users behave in the dimensions of possession quantity, usage Frequency, and acquisition Recency. We propose a multivariate model to examine these behaviors jointly and calibrate it using data from a survey of app users. We take a Bayesian MCMC computational approach for model calibration. The results are consistent with our theoretically derived expectations. The significance of the findings is discussed.